A game for the mother-in-law in all of us. (The Sims (PC))

Member Name: xadoc

Product:	The Sims (PC)
Date:	02/04/03 (432 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent gameplay

Disadvantages: Horribly addictive

Are you nosey? Do you like to meddle in people's lives, push them around, tell them what to do, who to talk to, what music to listen to, how to decorate? Well, these people won’t mind a bit. In fact, half the time, they need the guidance.

In the game, you take control of a household. You can design the house, the garden, choose its furniture and residents, control their actions, and decide whether they become rich, popular, and successful, or penniless and miserable. Make no mistake; this is appallingly addictive.

As with many other Sim games, there is no real conclusion; there are no missions to accomplish, no puzzles to solve, no levels to conquer. However, that isn’t to say that there aren’t things to strive for.

Your family starts off with 20,000 simoleons, which doesn’t buy much, so they’re going to have to work for the things that will give them an easier and happier life. They’ll need to climb the career ladder, schmooze with the best, and work out body and mind if they want that big house on the hill with the pool, spa, plasma TV, and “fuzzy-logic” dishwasher.

You get some initial loading screens, which take a wee while on my 1GHz PC; we’re not back to the days of sticking the tape cassette in the drive and coming back in half an hour to turn it over, quite, but it’s not as quick as most other games.

Loading messages scroll across the screen as you’re waiting. Does anyone know what “reticulating splines” means? It used to say it when you loaded up SimCity too. Answers on a postcard, please…

BEGINNING THE GAME – THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

Anyway, when you’re done, you arrive at the Neighbourhood Screen; an overhead view of the little suburb in which your Sims will live. There are 9 lots, and when you first load up the game there are 5 houses already built, the rest are vacant lots.

There will be a
big arrow pointing to the tutorial house where you join Betty and Bob Newbie. It doesn’t teach you everything, but it will certainly give you a good enough grounding to be able to thrash out on your own.

If you don’t do the tutorial, your options are this:
You can go to the choose/create a family screen.
You can bulldoze empty houses.
You can evict a family already living in one of the houses.
You can click on a house where a family lives to play the game with that family.

Starting the game with a ready-made family is the simplest way to find out about the game, as their houses are already furnished with most basic needs in mind.

GIVING BIRTH TO YOUR SIMS – No epidural needed.

If you go to the choose/create a family screen you have three options. The psychics will probably have guessed that you can either choose a family or create one… and the third option is delete family. There are a few families already waiting, but they’re boring, so I delete them and create my own. They don’t get a funeral, I’m afraid, they just cease to exist.

The first thing you have to do when giving birth to a family of Sims is to move to the Create a Family screen and type in their surname. Then you get to start genetic engineering.

You decide if it’s to be an adult or child (your first character must be an adult, as children can’t live alone). You can choose the gender of your character, and whether their skin tone is light, medium or dark.

Then once you’ve done that, you can cycle through the selection of heads and bodies and match a pair you’re happy with for your Sim. Depending on the outfit you choose, the person will be fat, fit, or skinny, so if you choose the man dressed in the slobby jeans and t-shirt (fat), then change him into the tuxedo, he will also shed a few stone! If only it was so easy in real life... (sigh)

You give th
e person a name, and you can write a bit of a story about them in their Bio section, if that floats your boat. Your final task for that Sim is to distribute their personality bars between the 5 attributes: Neat, Outgoing, Active, Playful, and Nice, to determine their character. You have a finite number of bars, but you don’t have to use them all.

Putting different amounts in different sections does have a marked effect on the Sim’s character. If they have lots of “active” bars, they’ll get out of bed quicker, move around quicker and tire less easily when working out. If they’re more “outgoing” or “nice”, they’ll find it easier to interact with other Sims and make friends.

The allocation of the personality bars also determines the Sim’s star sign. From this you’re meant to be able to work out who they’re compatible with, but since I don’t know anything about astrology, it doesn’t mean anything to me.

Once you’re happy with your Sim, you can save them and return to the family screen to decide whether there are more members in the family, or whether they live alone. Any new members will share the same surname, and once you leave the Family screen you cannot return to add more members.

I think the largest family you can have is 6 members, but that’s plenty to cope with, and keeping track of everyone’s needs is quite challenging. If you’ve got 6 Sims and they’re all making it to work and school, everyone’s getting fed, and no-one's peeing on the floor, you’re doing well.

Once you’ve created or chosen your family, you can move them into the neighbourhood.

SETTING UP HOME – No mortgage broker needed

Your family can move into one of the empty houses on the block (provided they can afford it), or they can build their own house on one of the vacant lots; see BUI
LD MODE later. Buying an empty house usually works out cheaper.

If you choose for them to move into a house, you simply click on it, confirm you want to buy it and then you move into the main game screen. Walls will be built, wallpaper and carpets will already be in place, and gardens may be landscaped, but you will need to use the family’s remaining funds to buy the things to satisfy the family’s needs.

When you buy an empty lot, that’s exactly what you get, save perhaps the odd tree, and maybe a stream at the bottom of the garden. You decide where walls will be, where the doors and windows are going to go, what wallpaper and carpets the house will have, everything. Don’t forget – you can’t spend all that cash, you’ll need to save some to buy the things the family will need to live too.

It’s no good them living in a palace if there’s no loo – you’ll have unhappy Sims and lots of puddles. Building from scratch is great fun, but takes quite some time, so you might want to play the game a bit first to give you an idea of what Sims need in a home.

THE HOUSEHOLD – Come inside and meet the folks…

The main game screen is an overhead view of their house and garden. The game starts in “play” mode and you will see the family stood at the edge of their garden, by the road. If you don’t do anything they will start to wander around and explore, and perhaps interact with each other.

To choose what your Sim does, click on the object or person you want to interact with, and the options available will be displayed around a little picture of your Sim’s head. You can also queue up a series of actions you want your Sim to perform (maximum of 8).

The household screen is mainly comprised of the view of the property, with a control panel at the bottom. There is a blue arc in the bottom-left corner of the screen. On this arc
are displays showing the time (in the game), your bank balance, and how many friends your family has.

There are buttons to zoom in and out, change the orientation of the camera, change between the four speeds (paused, slow, medium, fast), and options for viewing the house - whether you’re looking at upstairs or downstairs, whether the walls are permanently up, invisible, or up but disappear when you move past them.

There are also three circles at the top of the arc to move between play, buy and build modes, and two smaller circles to access your camera and photo album (yes you can actually take photos of memorable events in your Sims’ lives) and to change settings, save, and exit the game.

If you click on the arc, an information bar will appear. Its display will reflect the mode you are in.

PLAY MODE – Here’s where the action is, baby.

If you are in “play” mode, the information bar will display pictures of your Sim family members, and information relating to them. Whichever Sim’s picture is highlighted, the info bars on the right refer to them. This Sim will also be indicated on the main display by a large double pointed diamondy thing hovering above their head as they wander around.

In the centre of the information bar is a display, which looks a bit like a graphic equaliser. Clicking on the icons here displays more specific information to the right of the bar.

Mood

Yup, your Sims are like Tamagotchi, and you’d do best to keep them happy. Mood is represented by a pair of theatre masks. Green bars above the icon are good, red bars below are bad. The more bars there are, the more extreme your Sim’s mood. Their mood is also reflected in the hovery diamondy thing I mentioned earlier – the greener the diamondy thing, the happier they are.

Mood is affected by eight Needs:

Hunger – Sims need to eat and drink.
Comfo
rt – Sims get uncomfortable if they’re on their feet for too long.
Hygiene – They need to wash or they become aware that they smell!
Bladder – Sims need toilet trips too, or they make puddles!
Energy – Sims need sleep, or at the very least, caffeine.
Fun – Sims get depressed and become uncooperative if you don’t let them have fun.
Social – Sims need to interact with others or they become lonely.
Room – Sims like to be in large, clean rooms, with nice things.

Your Sims’ actions change their moods. Eating a meal will decrease your Sim’s hunger need, but increase their bladder need. Going to the loo will decrease the bladder need but increase their hygiene need, and so on… All the needs increase naturally over time and keeping your Sim happy will require some deft juggling of the various activities available.

If a Sim is in a particularly good mood, they might sing in the shower. If they are particularly unhappy they will start to wave and yell at you with bubbles above their head showing what they want.

If they are really peed off they will throw tantrums and refuse to do pretty much everything you ask. This can make things difficult if they’re complaining that they’re not having fun, but then decide they’re too depressed to play a game, so it’s best to try and keep your Sim on an even keel.

Personality

Clicking on the head icon in the centre shows the Sim’s personality, which is decided when the Sim is created. Their personality is divided between the attributes; Neat, Outgoing, Active, Playful, and Nice, and can’t be changed; see the GIVING BIRTH TO YOUR SIMS section.

Friendships

Clicking on the icon of two people holding hands displays pictures of all the Sims your Sim has met, along with a bar underneath each showing the relationship rating out of 100, with 0 being “
stranger” to 100 being “intimate friend”.

The Sims in the neighbourhood will drop by unannounced when you first move in, to give you a chance to meet them. After that, you call them on the phone to invite them over. Just don’t ring before 7am or after midnight, they won’t thank you for it, and if they’re at work or school, you won’t be able to get through. Sometimes a Sim will ask if they can bring a friend with them. If you invite lots of Sims over the police might call around to break up the party if it’s getting late!

The friendship rating will increase the more your Sim interacts with their fellow Sims. The first time you meet, the options for interaction may be limited – you might only be able to talk and ask the other Sim to leave, for example, but as you get to know them better, the options increase until you may be able to talk, entertain, tickle, give back rubs, kiss, and even propose!

If you start off on the wrong foot you may also have the options of insulting, teasing and bragging to your neighbour. Just don’t expect this to have a good effect on your relationship!

A smiley face under the bar indicates the person is a friend, a heart indicates that your Sim loves that person (who can be of the same or opposite sex). Generally, a person becomes a friend at around 50 points, but grumpy people are more difficult to be friendly with and may require a rating of 70!

Relationship points slowly seep away as time passes, so relationships need constant maintenance. A friend will soon cease to be one if your Sim doesn’t talk to them for a few days. You usually receive a warning that your friendship is slipping before that Sim stops being a friend. Some speedy remedial action is all that’s needed to get things back on track.

When a neighbour visits, they will stay until they get bored, tired, hungry, jealous (oh yes, the green eyed monster is
alive and well – try kissing someone else with your Sim’s spouse in the same room – they’ll soon get a slap!) or otherwise unhappy, or if it gets too late (after 1am). If you’re fed up with them, you can always ask them to leave, in which case they’ll say their goodbyes, and go home with no hard feelings.

Career

Unfortunately your Sims’ days are not ones of idle bliss. If they want the nice stuff, they’re going to have to work. Their career information is represented by an icon of a person sat behind a desk, and clicking on it gives their job title and daily wage, with an icon representing their career track, and bars showing what skills they possess.

A Sim gets a job by reading the paper (one career track advertised per day) or by using a computer (three careers advertised per day). The paper is delivered automatically every morning by the delivery girl and is thrown onto your lawn. If it is still there by the next day, it turns green, is useless and needs to be recycled.

There are several career tracks to choose. Your Sim starts at the bottom of the career ladder, and slowly works their way up. They might start out as a security guard and eventually work up to being chief of police, or as a hospital porter and wind up a brain surgeon. You can even choose a life of crime!

Generally, the further up the ladder they go, the more they’re paid for working fewer hours, but they need skill and friends to get there.

If your Sim is a child, clicking this icon displays their school grade, which can be improved through study (you’ll need a bookcase). If they get consistently high grades, they will be rewarded with 20 simoleons from Grandad, which goes into the family bank account, but if they play truant, their grades will drop sharply. It might just be a rumour, but I have heard that if your kid falls too far behind they get shipped off to Borstal!

The
re are six skills a Sim can possess, and these can be increased through study or practice.

Cooking – studying cookery books.
Mechanical – studying mechanical books.
Charisma – practicing speeches in the mirror.
Body – working out on the bench press.
Logic – playing chess.
Creativity – painting or playing the piano.

Different career paths require more of certain skills. A scientist is expected to have good mechanical skill and logic; an actor is expected to have a good body, plenty of charisma, and so on.

Every time your Sim climbs a rung on the career ladder, the display will show which skills they need to advance next in order to climb further, and whether they need more friends.

Fortunately, a friend of the household counts as a friend for each Sim for the purposes of employment, so in this respect, larger families can be helpful. Children can be especially helpful in this respect, as it seems to be easier for them to make friends with other children than it is for adults to make friends.

Often, a promotion results in a change in working hours (your Sim may even need to work night shifts), always results in an increase in salary, and may mean they wear different clothes when going to work, and also the car that picks them up improves in standard too.

If your Sim goes to work having satisfied the skill and friends requirements for promotion and in a good mood, they are certain to be promoted, but be careful! A Sim can miss work for a day, but if they fail to get to the car in time two days running, they will be sacked, and will have to start a new career path at the bottom again!

House

The final icon in the set displays statistics about the house. I must confess that I almost never look at them. I upgrade the house and its contents whenever I can afford it, so I don’t find it relevant. Anyway, it tells you the square footage of the
house, how many bedrooms it has, how many bathrooms, what type of lot it’s on (small, medium or large) and there are bars evaluating the size, furnishings, yard, upkeep and layout.

Basically Sims like large rooms so they can move about freely, they like lots of natural light, so windows are good, they like it to be kept clean and they like it to contain nice stuff.

Hiring a maid (one of the options on the telephone) is one of the first things I do, and it’s money well spent at 10 simoleons per hour. You can also hire a gardener to come round and water your plants once every three days.

ASKING ANOTHER SIM TO MOVE IN – Are you lonesome tonight?

When your Sim becomes very friendly with another Sim, the option of getting married or asking them to move in may appear. Sims can marry as many times as they like (to members of the opposite sex) and a wedding is a bit of an event.

The bride and groom will do a swift “wonderwoman”-style change into wedding gear, and if there’s anyone else around, they will come to watch. A photograph will automatically be taken and put in the family album to be cherished forever, well at least until the next wedding.

Moving in is still an event, just not as impressive, but a photo is taken then too. If the Sim moving in/getting hitched is the last adult in a household they will bring all of that house’s accumulated wealth and any children they may have. The house becomes empty but remains furnished and can be bought at a pretty good price.

To have the best chance of the Sim saying “YES!” to your proposal, they need to be in a good mood. From experience, this sequence works best: invite Sim of 90+ rating and in love over before 6pm, prepare food while waiting for them to arrive. Greet them, talk, sit down to dinner, let them go to the loo, talk, do something fun with them for a while (dancing perhaps), talk, hug, kiss, pop the qu
estion.

BABIES – Yup, Mr Stork comes a callin’.

If your Sim is on good terms with another Sim in the house of the opposite sex, they can choose to have a baby. Also, the phone will sometimes ring and it will be the adoption agency asking if you want a baby, so gay couples and single people can have kids too.

Think twice about having a sprog though; babies are hell to look after. It is very hard to tell what they want, as all the cries sound the same, and if you don’t get it right and they cry for too long, a Social Worker will come and take them away, which just the pits; you feel sooo guilty! Babies do grow into children… eventually, but children never grow into adults.

Kids can be great, they bring friends (and therefore their friends’ parents to the house when it’s time to go home) and I like to create particularly neat kids so they help with the cleaning up. Who said child labour had been abolished!

The kids can’t do everything the adults can do though, they can’t cook for themselves and can only get snacks from the fridge, they can’t drink coffee, and they can’t use the spa, or other things. The adults can’t use some of the kids’ toys either.

DEATH – The grim reaper stalks us all…

Oh, did I forget to mention your Sim can die? Well, they can. They can starve, die in a fire, and probably die of boredom too. You get a blast of the funeral march, a little urn in their place and if you put it out in the garden it becomes a tombstone. Family members passing it will start to wail and cry. Not fun, and second only to having your baby taken away by Social Services in terms of feeling a failure. Oh, yes, it happens.

BUY MODE – for the Sim who loves to shop.

This is accessed via the second circle on the arc, and its picture looks like a chair with a lamp (or is it a palm tree?) behind. Clicking on it br
ings up eight icons representing the different categories items have been sorted into.

You can choose how they are sorted too. Initially they are sorted according to what they do, but if you click again the icons change, sorting them according to which room they belong in. Not sure what practical use this is, but the option is there should you want to use it.

To the right of the icons are pictures showing all the items available to buy. If you click on one, a box will appear above, showing a larger picture, a wittily composed description, and ratings out of 10 regarding its effect on the eight Needs; Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, and Room.

Different objects reduce different needs by varying degrees, and some objects reduce more than one need at once. A bath will decrease both hygiene need and comfort need, whereas a shower will only decrease hygiene, for instance.

The cheapest shower (800 simoleons) may only be rated hygiene 6 but the most expensive (2999 simoleons) hygiene 10. Basically, this means that your Sim will be clean much quicker in the more expensive shower, leaving more time free to pursue other activities.

When you start the game, all you really need is a fridge, a toilet, a bed, and some way of improving hygiene, be it bath, shower, hand basin or bathroom cabinet (so they can brush their teeth). However, your Sims won’t like having to eat standing up, prefer cooked food and will get bored with nothing else to do.

At some point early on, you’ll also need a bookcase, an easel or piano, a chess set, bench press, and a mirror. You don’t need to buy all these things at once, but you will need to buy them to advance your Sims’ skills and further their careers.

When you want to buy something, just click on it and place it in the house or garden. You can put things pretty much anywhere, so long as they aren’t in the same square as other things
, and some things need to go on top of tables, others sit on the floor. You’ll figure it out.

You can rotate the item through 90 degrees and there’s nothing stopping you from putting a fridge in the bathroom if you want, or a basketball hoop in the bedroom. It’s entirely up to you.

There are way too many objects to go through them all here and explain what you can do with them, but some of them can be quite funny. Try putting the plastic flamingos on the lawn and kicking them…

If you run out of money, or just tire of an item, you can also sell it. Going into buy mode and clicking on the item will give you this option, and tell you how much you will get for it. Generally, the longer you’ve had something, the less it’s worth, but some art and antiques do appreciate in value.

You can buy something and resell it the same day (before midnight) and get your full money back, but after midnight it’s worth less. This is one way of giving your Sims the things they can’t really afford. If they buy an item, use it and sell it all within a day, it will have cost nothing, which can be very helpful with expensive items you need temporarily to advance your Sims’ skills, or for providing fun for a party, like a good stereo. Evidently the Sims have Argos too.

When you’re kitting out your house, don’t forget the burglar and smoke alarms!! There’s nothing more frustrating than spending all your money and then having the house burgled while you’re asleep or at work (plus if the police catch the burglar you get a reward!), or if your Sim hasn’t had the chance to study cooking and burns the house down, killing themselves in the process…

BUILD MODE – Your chance to put Lawrence Llewellen-Bowen to shame.

Here’s where you get to stretch your architectural and interior design muscles. It is accessed via the third circle on the ar
c, the one with the picture of the house in it. You can use it to build a house from scratch (if you’ve bought a vacant lot) or to add an extension, or just redecorate.

There are twelve initial icons, allowing you to raise or lower the land, add water features, walls, decoration, stairs, fireplaces, plants, floor coverings, doors, windows, and choose the roof. The twelfth is a hand icon allowing you to pick things up and move them.

When you click on the icon, the floor of the property is divided into grid squares. All objects have to be placed according to the grid. Building is easy, you just click and drag where you want the wall to go. You can build walls along the lines of the grid, or diagonally across from corner to corner, but you can’t achieve everything you want with that. You can’t have curved walls (or a curved roof) so no turrets, and you can also only have certain types of junctions between walls – a “Y” junction isn’t possible.

You can build one or two storey houses. For two storeys, put some stairs in and then click on the “upstairs” icon on the arc, and put the floor and walls in.
You can create terraces and balconies, build yourself a separate garage, swimming pool or studio, and you can choose to paint the outside of your house as many different colours as the inside, since the decorating palette is the same for either.

I don’t need to say too much about the build mode as it functions in a very similar way to buy mode in most respects. You click the icon depending on what you want to do, and choose from the options displayed by the pictures on the right.

One useful tip – when decorating walls or laying carpets, holding the shift key down will paint or carpet the entire room in one go, saving you lots of hassle.

One thing you must remember is that when you leave Build Mode you’ve bought the stuff and won’t get the f
ull value back if you sell it. This applies even if you go back into Build Mode immediately, so don’t try the Argos trick, it won’t work; B&Q evidently doesn’t have as generous a returns policy.

BUT THERE’S MORE – Honestly, I’m just scratching the surface…

So now you know all about the Sims, right? Well, not quite. Here are other aspects of the game might be of interest.

If your Sim improves their creative skill, they will paint better pictures (which can be sold), and will play more complicated tunes on the piano. If they improve their cooking skill, their meals will be more nutritious and they’ll start fires less. If they improve their mechanical skill they will be able to repair broken items and save on repair bills (you can use the telephone to call the Repairman, but he’s pricey).

The phone rings every so often. It’s worth answering because sometimes you’ve come into money, sometimes it’s a friend calling to say that their friendship is wearing thin, sometimes it’s just waffle. If your Sim misses the car to work, the phone will ring an hour after they were due to start, warning you that they have missed work and will be sacked if they do it again.

Deaf people aren’t at a disadvantage playing this game. If the phone is ringing it will have motion lines around it, if the stereo is playing you can see musical notes rising from it. If a significant event occurs – burglary, fire, the car for work arriving, a small window will appear in the bottom right hand corner of the screen to alert you to it.

You have a mailbox and dustbin at the end of the garden by the road. Rubbish has to go here ultimately, but you can have a waste paper bin and/or trash compactor in the house that will need emptying periodically (the maid takes care of it).

Every few days the post lady will call and pop a bill in the mailbox (you know if t
here’s something there because the flag will be up). The bills gradually turn from white through yellow and orange to red. After a while you will get a reminder that the bill needs paying and if you don’t pay up, the bailiffs will show up and start repossessing your stuff…

If you don’t like the Sims’ choice of music, you can even save your own MP3 files into the The Sims/Music/Stations folder on your hard drive, and they will play on the stereo!

BORED OF THE GAME? Not yet…

They say familiarity breeds contempt. Well, if that’s the case, go onto the Internet and download more stuff, or buy an expansion pack, there are plenty to choose from!

There are loads of sites specialising in downloads of faces, clothes, and tons and tons of furniture and appliances, wallpaper, carpets, plants and more. Some of them you have to pay to be a member of to get their stuff, but there are loads of free sites you can check out, so you’d have to be a real addict to become a member.

Word of WARNING… load up new heads, bodies and items a few at a time as a bad one will cause your system to crash, and if you’ve just downloaded tons it will take you ages to work out which is the bad apple. The things have to be placed in the correct folders on your hard drive to be recognised, but you soon get the hang of it.

Good sites I’ve used in the past are: www.7deadlysims.com, www.mallofthesims.com, www.simdandies.com, www.simfever.com, www.welldressedsim.com, and of course, the official site itself where you can download free goodies; thesims.ea.com.

You can even download a patch so the Sims wander around nude, or just so that you can see them naked when they get in the bath or shower, rather than being blurred!

There are also plenty of expansion packs – I got my copy packaged with House Party, but there is Livin’ it Up, Hot Date, Holiday, Unleashed, an
d a few unauthorised ones too. They give even more items to play with, more career paths, more interactions and even new places for your Sims to visit.

The Sims is made by EA Games and Maxis, and a basic copy retails at around £20, but it first came out in 2000, so there are deals and second-hand bargains to be had. The add-on packs are between £15 and £20.

This will give you hours of entertainment, sometimes too many; there is no real-time clock in the game, and the speeded up cycles of night and day can be very disorientating - it’s like those casinos in Vegas where you haven’t got a clue what time it is. You think you’ve been playing an hour or so, then you look at your watch, it’s 3am and you’ve got to go to work in the morning... but that feeling might be kind of familiar around here...

Minimum spec is 233 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM, 2 MB Video, 300 MD Free HD space, but I think that’s probably pushing it to the limits and you’d probably have to close everything running in the background.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll love The Sims. If you’re not, you still might well love The Sims, it’s an excellent game.

A worrying thought strikes me. What if we’re all just Sims on someone else’s computer...?

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